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Wikipedia plot descriptions of musicals never do them any favors, but it's funny how many people on Twitter seemed to think DEH was some heartwarming coming out story. Ha ha, nope. Maybe World's Greatest Dad will get more love now.

The showrunners of This Is Us said it was only going to have six seasons a few years back; they're actually sticking to it. Also, Sterling K Brown probably wasn't going to stay any longer and it's not a procedural where they can just bring in new doctors/lawyers/firefighters and the story can keep going. But good for A Million Little Things sticking around, as a ripoff version of another show, it's done a lot better than those Mad Men wannabes like The Playboy Club and Pan Am.

Looks good, but Ben Platt is well past the point of playing a high school kid in any medium where closeups are involved.

Variety got an 89 year old HFPA member on the record who said that they are diverse because, “We have Chinese. We have Japanese. We have different things,” she said. “We don’t have people who are Black-skinned for a very simple reason — because nobody applied.” Not true, BTW (they rejected a Black applicant in 2013, though the person did get 33 votes in favor). I think it's a bit of Column A arcnd Column B: the HFPA has always been a corrupt mess, but the industry ignored it so long as they could benefit. Now that the ratings tanked and the industry wants to "Do something!" regarding social justice, the HFPA is a convenient punching bag.

It's good publicity for the movie, if nothing else...

Maybr too many celebrities must have had bad dealings with them through the years, less on the show itself than behind the scenes. Now that the HFPA is down, the stars feel free to unload. Kind of like what you saw with Weinstein: hardly anyone ever liked him, even before his downfall. The relationship between prestige movies and awards season is generally very symbiotic, but last year disrupted the whole ecosystem. The stars and the movies didn't get the same publicity boost these shows normally give them. Maybe some of them think awards shows are on their way out, so they're in a "Screw it," sort of mood. Maybe they think holding the Golden Globes to account on inclusion means they've done their part to improve diversity in Hollywood. Who knows? Of course the Globes shouldn't be racist, but why expect much from an organization so clearly lacking in integrity all along?

Seems like a big issue was the proposed membership changes: I never took this show super seriously, it was a good party and publicity for contenders, but the whole enterprise has always been pretty shameless and the organization was dubious. Stars themselves would even call them out while they were onstage. So I guess the HFPA members didn't really take the complaints seriously this time, because they've always survived before when everyone knew about the bribes/gifts for nominations and wins, and still kept showing up for it. Also, the members not being American is probably a factor in them not really "getting" the social justice/representation issues at play. Hollywood must really see the Globes as expendable, because they feel free to dunk on them openly and cut them loose. Awards bait mega-producer Scott Rudin "revealed" as a bully prone to violence? It was *crickets* from the A-list, for the most part... The Globes are dead and Bennifer lives-what a time to be alive!

I do hope the HFPA gets itself together, not just because it's a fun show (in normal times) but so many musicals are coming out this year, it's made for the Globes.

The Christmas specials pretty much played like movies anyway...

The CEO of that crisis PR firm is the woman who inspired Scandal. So basically, the HFPA is such a mess that "Olivia Pope" has washed her hands of them. Think about that: the woman has dealt with political shenanigans in the White House, but the Golden Globes are too much of a disaster, even for her. Amazing... House of Gucci is either sweeping the Oscars or the Razzies...

They have time to get themselves together, but it's not looking good right now:

Wondering if there is room for both In the Heights and West Side Story, if it will be a "there can only be one" situation, or if they will almost cancel each other out? Like this season, I think One Night In Miami or Ma Rainey's Black Bottom would have gotten more nominations in an alternate universe where they weren't competing against each other. Will the Golden Globes even happen next year? The HFPA is a mess right now and need to get it together, but it would be a shame if the Globes are canceled in a year a musical-heavy year.

I always wondered if they would be able to keep the host a secret prior to the ceremony, or at least not announce anyone ahead of time. The ceremony could use an emcee (or several), but not knowing in advance would cut down on so much of the "noise" about the choice. Having "de facto" hosts is probably the best option for the Academy, but like you said, it will take a complete change in their approach to the telecast. They are just too in their heads trying to please everyone, an impossible task, but they have a huge TV contract to consider. It's funny that the 2019 ceremony actually went up in ratings, when most of their grand plans to "shake things up" (Popular Film! Not inviting back last years winners! Categories during commercial breaks! Shortened song performances!) got called off after massive backlash.

But Singer was fired, they could point to that as "proof" they didn't condone his behavior and trot out the new unproblematic director, before pivoting to the surviving members of Queen on the campaign trail and bringing up the memory of Freddie Mercury as much as possible. Whatever this movie is about, it won't be able to invoke anything as powerful as Queen nostalgia as a distraction from its issues. Maybe it helps that Lily Tomlin doesn't seem to have any lingering hard feelings toward Russell, but there are other stars who have definitely had negative things to say about how he treats people on set. It's not a secret, it didn't happen behind closed doors, they can't claim they had no idea. Still, I would be surprised if it goes as far as everyone who's made a movie with David O being badgered into apologizing for it, a la Woody Allen. I guess it depends on how brutal the inevitable Hollywood Reporter/Variety/etc exposé is.

Hosting the Oscars has become a pretty thankless job. Casual watchers enjoy Billy Crystal and Ellen types, the more hard-core awards junkies want more "sophisticated" humor, a big segment of hate watchers who "don't care" about awards make the most noise complaining about the show, and producers are trying to please all of these factions. Not to mention that any well-known comedian with decades of experience is going to have jokes/bits in their history that Awards Twitter will deem "problematic", and will try getting them thrown off the gig. Any comedian who's not like that is probably not famous enough for AMPAS to consider. They can go the non-comedian route, but if they pick a theater type, the musical haters will complain about the extra singing, even when it works (Hugh Jackman), or the person may be "too theater" for the Oscars (Neil Patrick Harris). They can just pick any movie person, but the James Franco/Anne Hathaway experiment didn't go so well, few actors want that target on their backs.

Very familiar with Rob Mills from my years of watching The Bachelor franchise: so not surprised he'd view the Oscars like just another reality show where manufactured drama and reveling in the pain of the participants are fine, so long as it gets "buzz". Next year, Best Picture is going back to a fixed ten nominees, that will also help with getting more populist movies nominated, at least.

Forget epics-how about a Best Picture winner that makes $100 million (domestic) ever again? Obviously impossible this year, but voters these days seem allergic to anything too popular in the top category. Titanic and Return of the King came along under the "first past the post" voting system and five nominees, the preferential ballot leads to least objectionable/consensus winners. Anything too big will have a lot of detractors-just imagine how Awards Twitter would have reacted to Titanic if social media had existed back then. Not that voters always listen to Twitter....You know, if Bohemian Rhapsody had been directed by somebody who wasn't reprehensible (allegedly), it probably would have won Best Picture and gotten even more nominations than it did. Not an "epic", but a massively popular movie the Academy was clearly crazy about. There have been awkward presenter/winner pairings before, but the stakes of Baby Driver losing when Ansel and Eiza Gonzalez presented the Sound categories were a lot lower than this year's debacle. ABC is defending themselves about the show ending like it did, because of course they are:

Source

Parodied on Saturday Night Live this weekend (along with other movies like it):

Best Actress is really all over the map. The Golden Globes, Critics Choice, SAG have different winners, and none of those winners are nominated at BAFTA. Suppose Kirby wins there, then all the nominees come into Oscar night with a televised precursor except McDormand, who's in the Best Picture frontrunner, which never hurts a person's odds. A third Best Actress win for her doesn't seem like the most likely thing, but it's an extremely unusual year, so... Best Supporting Actress isn't as scattered, but it's not like the Actor categories where sweeps are happening so far.

Recast! Seriously though, good luck to the guy who plays Anthony, he's nice looking and all, but he won't be the same sort of swoonworthy lead that made S1 so popular. Rege-Jean Page broke out insanely fast since Bridgerton debuted and can actually act, so I'm not surprised he would be eager to move on, especially since Simon is more of a supporting player in the other books. I just figured the Netflix contracts would have locked in the young stars for a three seasons, at least...

I actually think the Emmys have had the opposite problem from the Oscars in recent years, that there are too many shows scattered across premium channels/streaming and it's been hard for the general public to keep up. But the experience of watching TV hasn't been affected as drastically by Covid as moviegoing--if anything, it gave it a boost (more time at home)--so it would make sense that the Emmys ratings drop wasn't so bad. A big part of awards coverage is the fashion, the red carpet experience, and there is some of that depending on the nominees/presenters, but it's just not the same with Zoom and social distancing. So even if the movies were popular and well known, that element is missing and that audience is gone. It's just a tough year for the Academy, I'm not sure how much frame rate and aspect ratio changes are going to help the telecast.

Demographic breakdown of the audience:

Maybe, but there have been breakout TV events since Covid (Tiger King, The Queen's Gambit, Bridgerton, to name a few) and a series takes up even more of a person's time than a movie. The Emmy ratings also sucked this past year, but you didn't get the same lament that "there weren't any new TV shows" like you did with the film world.

Bad news for awards shows, if direct-to-streaming is the future of most contenders in the years to come: No one's watching the awards shows because they've barely heard of any of these movies. Are they "too small" in scope or do they just seem "not real" somehow? It would be interesting to know how these stats would compare to the last few Oscar seasons. Franchises and sequels have built-in recognition, from before. How much does a theatrical promo campaign/release add to general awareness of a movie? Even stuff like the weekend box office reports would get the name of a movie out there and kind of advertise it for the weeks to come, and for the home market. So much of awards publicity is about the long game and a movie going straight to streaming can be the opposite of that